According to a Yahoo News report, the Trump administration's CIA had plans to kidnap and assassinate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange while he was in London's Ecuadorian embassy. Some scenarios included Assange being abducted from the embassy or intercepting Russian attempts to extricate him. Or, an assassination attempt. Although none of these operations were approved, they show the alarming obsession of intelligence agencies with Wikileaks' controversial founder.
Yahoo quotes conversations with over 30 former US officials as sources. Eight of them provided details about Assange's kidnapping plans.
This report focuses on operations that were conducted during the Trump administration. Trump placed fewer restrictions on the CIA, and was less concerned by the consequences of launching direct attacks against a journalist. This issue was particularly hot after Wikileaks published a list of hacking tools that the CIA had created in March 2017. According to Yahoo, Pompeos became obsessed with WikiLeaks after that.
Yahoo quotes a former senior counterintelligence official saying that Trump's election marked a significant change. No one in the crew was going be too concerned about First Amendment issues.
This report confirms long-held suspicions regarding Wikileaks activists being monitored, as well as Assanges' stay at the Embassy. The situation reached the point that every person within a 3-block radius of the embassy was working for one intelligence service, according to one official. This could have been street sweepers, police officers, or security guards.
Lawyers associated with the Justice Department or the White House blocked the plans. They considered any abduction to be illegal. Even earlier, the idea of assassination was stopped by officials who described it as spitballing.
The reporting is a stark contrast to President Trump's campaign statements, where he frequently praised Wikileaks and Assange for publishing hack information from the Clinton campaign.
